I thought it might be good to share something about my objectives and my investing style. I hope you find it of interest and generates some discussion as I think Moneyam needs something more at the moment.

I work full time so I’m an investor now. In general I do have time to check the markets during the day but there are days when I’m in meetings for hours on end and it’s not appropriate. This works well for me as stops me over-trading. I suspect I would make less if I sat at a computer all day trying to invest.

Please feel free to discuss you trading style and reflect on how I could improve what I do.

I have two pots. The first pot is my SIPP and I therefore consider I must invest this with extreme caution. I consider a return of 5-10% as acceptable and any more as a bonus. The second pot is my trading pot where I take more risk. I am looking for 10+% plus a year from this. I only invest in UK equities. I no longer trade CFD’s or spreadbets due to the nature of my job, although many years ago I made a living day-trading.

My performance over the last 6 years is as follows:
2010 -0.3%
2011 -34.8% (too little diversification, bad timing and not very pleasant)
2012 +70.7% (umm – too little diversification –just got the timing wrong on the previous years purchases)
2013 +36.8% (umm – still too little diversification but what do you do when you’re in the right trades??)
2014 +5.5% (diversification getting better but my biggest share-holding hurt me badly)
2015 +5.5% so far

I have a very simple trading style. My primary objective is to sell equities when Ftse is high and buy when it is low i.e. I choose my entry and exit point depending on whether Ftse is overbought or oversold. The choice of share is secondary.

I often buy stocks in a clear downtrend on chart support points when Ftse is beaten up on the premise that Ftse will turn up in a short time frame setting up a bounce for the stock. These stocks will generally also have attracted me because of fundamentals, dividends or I believe they are significantly oversold. I also like recovery stories with long circulating bid rumours. Sometimes I buy stocks after research leads me to believe the share is significantly undervalued – this can be very profitable but usually a great amount of patience is required.

So, to explain in more detail this year as Ftse moved up early in the year I started selling heavily as Ftse reached 6700. By the time it reached its peak I was 91% in cash. As it headed back down again in June I started buying again at 6700 and by the end of June as Ftse was around 6500 I was 95% invested. Clearly I haven’t called this that well this year based on the evidence but I’m comfortable about it as doing something was better than doing nothing. Ftse is down 3.8% year to date and I’m up 5.5%. I suspect most people would be pretty happy with that – I am.

Here is my portfolio. It’s quite unbalanced and deliberately so. It breaks a load of rules with regard to diversification
24.3% - Sorry but I can’t share this stock with you yet as it’s not that liquid and I’m still acquiring stock. I’ve done my research and honesty believe a doubling of share price in three years would be a really poor outcome.

14.8% RBS. Most of these I have acquired between 337 and 362 although I have a few from 307. Already sold a few from 307 last week and if I can get somewhere between 339 and 342 next week they will be gone too. Earlier in the year they were trading at 400 and there were no sellers in sight as it trudged up day after day from 380 to 400. I’m of the view that this will come back over time as the government require the banks to be strong and make profits so we don’t have another crisis. I intend to hold all of these for a while (except for the few I’m selling next week) and start off-loading around 385 and see what happens from there

8.3% RDSB. Like many PI’s I’ve got drawn in by the dividend and most of these were bought between 1845 and 2025. I have a few at 1598 from last week which I honestly thought would be far higher given the rise in oil this week. I think oil has a bit higher to run yet and I’m looking to sell the ones from 1598 soon as I’ve got a few too many. Not sure what to do about the rest but the dividend of around 6% helps.

6.3% VSVS. Provides products to the steel industry. I’m in this as I think there is/will be global move away from concrete to steel due to construction costs and environmental issues. I bought these a few months ago and I’m a few percent down at the moment which is pleasing given general state of Ftse. The share register is interesting and the price activity over the last few weeks intrigues me and I have a “feeling in my waters” we may see some rumours around this stock over the next few months.

6.1% HSP – Hargreaves Services. In some ways I wish I’d never heard of this stock and I’m 14% down on them at the moment although it was far worse. This is a case of me doing research, working out its undervalued and buying on the expectation others would realise this too. The market can remain irrational for some considerable time when it has a mind to! It got really bashed around recently on a trading update and then bounced significantly on its interims. Since it delivered what it would said it would in the trading update nothing ceases to surprise me any longer.
Surprisingly it fell last week as oil rose. Offering a 9% dividend with two-thirds of this already declared for next month. I’m hoping to scale back on this in the near future and if not I’m fairly relaxed due to the dividend

5.8% PFL. Premier Farnell. Famous for the Raspberry Pi although that’s not why I bought it. I bought about two-thirds between 170 and 180 because of the chart and I thought the euro would strengthen (which has proved to be correct but hasn’t helped). The other third I bought last week at 119 and if I can get somewhere between 133 and 138 next week I’m selling. They may go for less. I don’t really want this many and I’ve got my eye on a few other things (HMSO around 620 looks a much better place to be). 8% dividend if it can afford to maintain it which the city boys seem to doubt. I’m of the view it has sufficient cash to pay this for the moment but I guess won’t be surprised if it’s cut. We’ll know soon enough

5.8% SFR. Severfield. Steel again. I like the man in charge. I bought at 69p and it held up well until the last couple of days of the recent FTSE fall. It hit a brickwall at 70 and a huge amount of shares have changed hands there. It had just crept over when the ftse carnage started. It’s fallen to the current price on very little volume so hopefully it will bounce back on similar. Happy to hold as comfortable enough with where this is going long term

4.8% Weir. Industrial with large exposure to US shale industry. Has been bashed down and I bought in at 1725-1825. Got some more last week at 1264 so those are getting sold any day now as I’ve got enough of these and I don’t believe in averaging. Every trade should stand on its own. The dividend is just over 3%. There were takeover rumours earlier in the year when the price was around 1700 so I’m hoping they will get resurrected. I’m happy to hold the rest for a while and see what happens

4.4% SPHR. Sphere Medical. This is speculative part of my portfolio. The share that will make me rich or I’ll lose all my money on it. 10 bagger or bust! It makes blood gas analysers for an intensive care setting without drawing any blood from the patients and provides instant results. Pretty good as I understand in ICU up to 19 blood tests can be required a day from patients. I imagine its pretty good for paediatrics too where babies don’t have loads of blood to start with. The product is launched and is at an early stage in the sales curve. This was Neil Woodford’s first investment from WPCT and he continues to add to his holding. Shares are very tightly held. An upgrade to the analyser is on its way which is hoped will significantly change the sales profile. I can talk endlessly about this company if anyone is interested which is a really bad sign as I’m too attached to it.

3.5% INTU. Property. I have a small profit on this despite buying months ago and Ftse being bashed around. I guess I’m looking for a 10% rise and to collect the dividends as I go. Very safe.

3.3% TATE. I’ve got a small profit on this too. Trade hasn’t gone as well as planned and I’d like to start reducing if it goes up as little as 3%

3.1% Another nameless stock I’m afraid. Quite illiquid and I haven’t decided if I’ve finished accumulating or not. I’ll only be taking a little more if I do.

2.9% LLOY. Who wouldn’t have Lloyds in their portfolio? Some dividends and good potential for growth. Share price a bit disappointing of late but I bought this at 39p so it owes me nothing.

1.9% STAN. Bought most of these at 737 last week although the rest are dire and out of the money from 890. I’m not feeling comfortable with them. Not sure what to do which means I’ll probably let them go and then watch the stock fly

1.4% BG. Held these from 820 from before the bid and just watched. Part of the reason I need to reduce my RDSB

1.2% CSG. Cyril Sweet Group. Bought at 22p so basically flat although I had the chance to sell higher. Quite speculative.

0.6% BP The only thing I can say about this is that having bought at 484 I didn’t buy any more on the way down. The dividend eases the pain ;-) Actually I did once buy some more on the way down but I had the sense to get out for a tiny profit on them.

0.6% AV. Bought at 498p a few months ago and this is all that’s left after selling four fifths higher up, so this has been good to me

0.5% FENR. 12% down on this although it’s bounced. Not much to say – not my best trade. The dividend is good.

0.5% HSBC. Out of the money on this. Could have done better.

0.1% Cash – I’m fully invested with Ftse at 6200 as I write today. Whilst I may rotate my stocks around a bit as there are some bargains out there right now I’ll in general be staying fully invested until Ftse hits 6500. I’ll reappraise then. I may change my mind depending on the mood of the market

right to the top thread Guys, not left

Ian if you removed some then remove all the rubbish why just the last two .

And mine was telling CC i had read his initial posting and telling the others to go elsewhere and row .

jimmy b

"cynic" post used an Inflammatory word, so they removed the last 4 post

I said to him yesterday>>>>>>
talk (post ) about the subject ......> My portfolio with commentary

an on the subject then

Trades today

I sold VAST @ 1.55p ( went over the upper Bollinger Band ) sell signal
Bought CEB @ 0.677p ( it seems retracement being completed )

i am greatly amused at the choice of deletions, and not for any obvious reasons either
sure as hell won't lose any sleep over it
using"hell" will probably merit the deletion of this post too, for blasphemy :-)

Hell Cynic!

Watch out!

you're right ..... the sheep are out to gum me to death :-)

did you notice someone always has to have the last word?

about time he pays for the sins, so Hell would be just the right place, if hell exist.

glad my buy is doing OK, there is a seller about, so needs a bit of time to get the strait up line.

Justin from share pickers admits he is now in CEB after reading this thread ( only half true )

yes I did notice mentor :-)

“SELL in May and go away, don’t come back till St Leger Day”

Should you buy again on St Leger Day?

Perhaps we should have more faith in the old US stock market adage.

Sorry been too busy for a few days to respond but thanks for all the posts. It shows this BB is not dead and I'm quite happy if people want to wander off topic as long as it isn't abusive.

I'll reply a bit more when I have time but things going vaguely to plan since my last post. Sold a few RBS as planned and managed to get a good price for a third of my TATE which I've put on HSMO.

I could do with oil going up and staying up for a couple of days. I'd like to get out of a few RDSB and WEIR and got my radar on a whole variety of stocks which look cheap.

SPHR starting to look interesting. I'll post separately on that

My today's trades so far

Close DAN on a T+4 @ 2.02p for a profit of 11%
Reason: no follow through this morning and over the top Bollinger Band and only a couple days left to close or pay.

Bought MONI T+20 @ 2.61p
Reasons : Looks like the drop at this point is overdone with market cap £56M is well below Cash £88M. Buyers are back and order book getting stronger from time to time, meaning ready to bounce back

for myself, of late, i have found FTSE and DOW (in particular) much more fruitful areas of investment (betting!) than individual stocks - see that specific thread

of invidual stocks, i recently bought BOO and that looks as though it will be very profitable - already well in the money and may possibly add

i also hold, perhaps for more long term SN., MBH, TEF and EZJ

as a sleeper, i also hold RM2, whose product is very interesting and i think has very good possibilities of success

An on the latest strategy sell on buy one...............

I was not greedy on CEB and got almost 0.12p or 17.5% on 5 days close on T+15, took advantage of the spike at the time ( though got higher since ) to sell.

but TERN was just ripe and open another position at 18.75p on a T+20 ( very hard to get as they wanted premium 19.50p but finally got it on the phone.

wanted to get in earlier on TERN, but CEB was starting to go better so I pause till got right for both.

--
chart done yesterday

Time for an update. I'm now down 3% for the year. A bit disappointing but recoverable. Probably I've been lucky as I made some decent money on RSA and was then able to buy some other stuff cheap. I've been moving my stocks around a bit.

My portfolio now stands as follows as sales prices:
1. CTO T.Clarke 37.0%
2. RBS Royal Bank of Scotland 14.1%
3. RDSB Shell 7.4%
4. VSVS Vesuvius 5.8%
5. NMD North Midland Constr 5.8%
6. SFR Severfield 5.5%
7. HSP Hargreaves Services 3.8%
8. SPHR Sphere Medical 3.5%
9. LLOY LLoyds 3.0%
10. WEIR Weir 3.0%
11. PFL Premier Farnell 2.8%
12. STAN Standard Chartered 1.8%
13. INTU Intu Properties 1.7%
14. BG. BG Group 1.5%
15. CSG Cryril Sweet 1.3%
16. AV. Aviva 0.6%
17. BP. BP 0.6%
18. HSBA HSBA 0.5%
19. FENR FENR 0.4%
20. Cash 0.1%

Obviously I've got a very good feeling about CTO. I used to work in this sector and understand it well. I plan to hold for 3 years and I'm looking forward to dividend and capital growth. I've been quietly picking up the stock for 18 months and I'm now maxed out on it.

I've got 3 problem stocks WEIR, PFL and SPHR. SPHR I'm not worrying about as I went into it with my eyes open and was risky. PFL has stabilised and isn't falling any longer so I'll hold on a while longer. WEIR is worrying me

After today my portfolio is only (rofl) 1% down now this year. Maybe the Santa rally will scrape me into profit.

I suppose I'm outperforming FTSE but that's little comfort.

I'll post a proper update over the Christmas break

So the year ends and I'm 1.8% down for the year (ignoring the tax benefit of my SIPP contribution as it hardly seems fair to include that in my performance)

My SIPP up 17.7%, wife's SIPP up 31.9%, trading pot down 7.1% which reflects the greater risk in the trading pot. At least I made the money in the right place!

Portfolio is now as follows (at sales values)
1. CTO T.Clarke 39.6%
2. RBS Royal Bank of Scotland 13.0%
3. RDSB Shell 6.6%
4. SFR Severfield 5.9%
5. NMD North Midland Constr 5.8%
6. VSVS Vesuvius 5.5%
7. LLOY LLoyds 3.9%
8. WEIR Weir 3.6%
9. SPHR Sphere Medical 3.5
10. HSP Hargreaves Services 3.8%
11. PFL Premier Farnell 2.6%
12. STAN Standard Chartered 1.8%
13. BG. BG Group 1.4%
14. CSG Cryril Sweet 1.2%
15. Barclays 1.1%
16. BP. BP 0.6%
17. HSBA HSBA 0.5%
18. FENR FENR 0.4%
19. Cash 0.1%

I made some decent profits at the start of the year and decided to invest them in some risky stuff, none of which has worked out and have been in and out of a few trades since which have helped out.

Looking forward to this year I'm comfortable with the banks and happy enough with the commodity related stocks as whilst they may fall some more I think we are near enough the bottom and I get some decent dividends on them. I obviously have far too much CTO for a balanced portfolio but I'm not going to sell any of them as I think it's still way undervalued.

Not happy with PFL and SPHR but will hold on a bit longer and see what happens

I am a little surprised but I am up a 30+%


My holdings are mainly :

Exchange EPIC Name Close Sector Subsector Projected Dividend Dividend cover
LSE EZJ easyJet PLC 17.4 Travel & Leisure Airlines 60.297 2.5
LSE IAG International Consolidated Airlines Group SA 6.105 Travel & Leisure Airlines 13.776
LSE AHT Ashtead Group PLC 11.19 Support Services Business Support Services 17.122 3.6
LSE CLLN Carillion PLC 3.029 Support Services Business Support Services 18.3 1.4
LSE CNCT Connect Group PLC 1.6825 Support Services Business Support Services 9.499 1.9
LSE SHI SIG PLC 1.436 Support Services Industrial Suppliers 4.648 2.5
LSE EPO Earthport PLC 0.2475 Software & Computer Services Internet
LSE GLEN Glencore PLC 0.9048 Mining General Mining 4.806 1.2
LSE LMI Lonmin PLC 0.835 Mining Platinum & Precious Metals
LSE AV. Aviva PLC 5.16 Life Insurance Life Insurance 21.938 2.8
LSE OML Old Mutual PLC 1.789 Life Insurance Life Insurance 9.4 1.7
LSE BDEV Barratt Developments PLC 6.26 Household Goods & Home Construction Home Construction 30.6 3
LSE BWY Bellway PLC 28.36 Household Goods & Home Construction Home Construction 90 2.9
LSE BKG Berkeley Group Holdings (The) PLC 36.88 Household Goods & Home Construction Home Construction 200 1.5
LSE BVS Bovis Homes Group PLC 10.15 Household Goods & Home Construction Home Construction 40 2.2
LSE RDW Redrow PLC 4.701 Household Goods & Home Construction Home Construction 9 7.4
LSE TW. Taylor Wimpey PLC 2.031 Household Goods & Home Construction Home Construction 9.369 7.4
LSE TEP Telecom plus PLC 10.71 Fixed Line Telecommunications Fixed Line Telecommunications 46 1
LSE CLIG City of London Investment Group PLC 3.245 Financial Services Asset Managers 24 1.1
LSE AXS Accsys Technologies PLC 0.6763 Construction & Materials Building Materials & Fixtures
LSE BARC Barclays PLC 2.189 Banks Banks 6.5 0.3
LSE LLOY Lloyds Banking Group PLC 0.7307 Banks Banks 2.21 2.5


EPO, AXS, BARC, GLEN SHI have done me no favours. Accepted CLIG yields.

Happy with Construction and house builders for short term longer. Bought a few more GLEN for 2years out????? and will hold BARCS and watch EZJ and IAG and AHT.

-=-=-=-=

Should have made more, but anxiety outweighed over greed.

A bit too heavy in TW.

Tossing a coin and will look for another bed for some.
-=-=-=-=-=

Good luck next year.

We may need it.

Not in CSN I notice Fred?

Stan,

Have held CSN and got out with a profit, but could have held longer and taken more.

Like its yield, but not its spread.

Can use stop sell, but it is still on my watch list.

It seems to be trading sideways at the moment and forecasts (if they are ever right).

? div is about 4 months out.

May consider parking a bit in it later.